Dream of Cenarius now increases the damage done by your next 2 Moonfire or Sunfire casts by 50%, down from 65%.

The hurricane change is great and all, but it doesn’t do anything to deal with the fact that Solar is still a very important side of our direct damage (since, well, we have to use it), and our direct damage in Solar is pretty poor. Continuing to buff the AoE side of Solar and making a larger discrepancy doesn’t solve the problem.

Dream of Cenarius is about back to where it started. I’m not exactly thrilled with the implementation of that talent, and I’m not sure anyone who is.

I’m not concerned about the nerf to Astral Communion. It clearly was not designed to be a DPS rotation ability, and the modification clears that up a bit.

Also, it looks like we will have some Woodland Creature friends:

Glyph of Mark of the Wild has been renamed Glyph of Charm Woodland Creature: Teaches you the ability Charm Woodland Creature. Allows the Druid to befriend an ambient creature, which will follow the Druid for 60 min.

Dream of Cenarius now increases healing done by your next healing spell by 70%, up from 30%. Tranquility is no longer affected.

Nature’s Vigil now increases all damage and healing done by 20% for 30 sec, down from 30%. Single target spells now damage or heal a nearby target for 25% of the damage/healing done, down from 50%.

Cenarion Ward seems pretty useless to me. It’s an underpowered rejuvenation, and after the change, is slightly cheaper. It has higher tick values but overall less healing. I guess a feral may like it because they can cast it in form, but it just seems pretty underpowered. With the exception of leveling up to 90, I cannot find a use for it over Renewal.

The Dream of Cenarius nerf means there is absolutely no reason for me to use this in PVE. Tranquility was the only reason I ever would have thought about it. The only thing I could possibly think of now would be in PVP, given that it affects Renewal. Might of Ursoc + Renewal heals for a huge chunk of damage, and if you can add 70% to that, you’re pretty much getting a self-Lay on Hands.

The Nature’s Vigil nerf means the overall sustained damage from Nature’s Vigil is only 3.33%, versus ~6% for Heart of the Wild. Unless you see some sort of burn phase where you get a bonus damage modifier, Nature’s Vigil will seem much less attractive. I’ll have to see what kind of numbers it pulls with Celestial Alignment + Bloodlust.

Also, the Horde bear form incarnation graphics were datamined as well, courtesy of MMO-Champion:

MMO-Champion has data-mined a lot of interesting things have been added to beta build 15677. First off, the druid cat forms now have armor for incarnation. We can expect the same for moonkin coming along shortly.

Heart of the Wild tooltip clarification: 6% Agility and Intellect bonus applies at all times.

Nature’s Vigil now only affect single-target healing and damage spells.

The change to Nature’s Vigil is expected, since Mushrooms, Starfall, Hurricane, etc would have made it quite OP. The mana reduction to Hurricane is nice, although I’m still not sure if I like where the damage is. We’ll need Recount to really tell. The Moonfire DoT increase is welcomed, but DoTs are still weaker compared to Cataclysm by a considerable amount in both damage and duration, so I’m still not satisfied.

Other various abilities and talents also had their wording clarified that they can’t be cast in travel or aquatic form. Basically, if an ability does not specifically specify “in all forms”, it won’t work in either of those two.

Nature’s Vigil (New) – Increases all damage and healing done by 30% for 30 sec. While active, all healing spells also damage a nearby enemy target for 50% of the healing done, and all damage spells and abilities also heal a nearby friendly target for 50% of the damage done. 3 min cooldown. Instant.

Do not be worried that Moonkin Form is not in the above list — shapeshifting roots from Moonkin Form was always available.

Another beta patch is being pushed, and it’s still inherently obvious that Blizzard has no clue what to do with talent trees. MMO-Champion is reporting some interesting base damage increases across the board.

Spell changes:

Starfall base damage has been increased by 20%. Now scales from 34% of Spell Power, up from 31.2%.

Our DoTs have been decreased considerably as the beta rolls on. Initially, from the talent removal of the personal damage boosts of Balance of Power, Master Shapeshifter, and Earth and Moon, to removing the improved ‘Insect Swarm’. Our direct nukes had damage increased to counter it, but DoTs did not. Now they’re reduced from 18 seconds to 12 seconds. Nerfing it just to re-introduce it via the 4 piece bonus seems a bit cheesy to me.

The slight increase in coefficients is nice, but I’m still not happy overall via the DoT change.

Force of Nature trees still do the same damage, so they were nerfed, from a 33% (60/180) uptime to a 25% (15/60) uptime.

As for the changes to Dream of Cenarius and Heart of the Wild, I’m bothered that Blizzard is making small tweaks to completely failed talent options, instead of a complete re-work.

Needless to say, I’m a bit hot under the feathers right now. What about you?

Total Eclipse now increases bonus damage from Eclipse by 16%, up from 12%. Each point of Mastery now increases the bonus by an additional 2%, up from 1.5%

Blizzard apparently acknowledged that Moonkin mastery was too weak and provided a slight tweak to the numbers. Now, each point of mastery will provide a 2% boost in Eclipse damage. (Up from 1.5%). Since Total Eclipse also provides us with a base mastery value of “8”, that is going to boost the standard Eclipse from 37.5% (25% + 12%) to 41% (25% + 16%).

What does that mean to you? Well, crit and mastery numbers were trending about on par for each other before this build, and should now give mastery a decent edge over crit. As haste values were still leaps and bounds over both, I don’t think we’ll see a change of haste being our prime stat.

Moonfire/Sunfire’s base mana cost was reduced from 18% to 9%, but that is most likely just a tooltip clarification. (I’ll verify this later, but I believe the mana cost was already halved when the base damage was buffed by 50% in a beta build).

The fungal growth change is handy, as I’ve often been out of range of my mushrooms and unable to pop them.

The soothe change was just reverting to 4.0.1 behavior. I’m not sure why they changed it in the first place. (Probably to offset the small mana cost we face versus the larger focus cost of a hunter, but it’s still a silly way to do it). Since I’m no longer doing heroic Arthas, I don’t really care either way.

A new beta build is being released, and the only balance change is to give a 1.5 second cast time to Soothe. It looks like hunters will not have this limitation, so hopefully we can return tranq duty to the focus-starving, QQing, murloc outfit wearing hunters.

Oh, and thanks to Balourd (I didn’t bother to look at the resto changes):

Squawkbox

Latest on Mon, 08:16 am

Athosian: @Thravia - at 16.5k crit u can effectively stack mastery. But.. you must have the T16 4set in order to not loose out on procs.

Thravia: Hi Sunfyre.
According to all my calculations, and simulationcrafts, mastery is better than both haste and crit, and especially better than haste once you get past the GCD cap - so why are all balance druids going full on with crit/haste?
I am having trouble figuring out what is most effective, and I am currently creating a BiS list for 5.4, but I don't know if I should go with a mastery/haste build, or crit/haste.
Here is a chart of my stat weights, http://i.imgur.com/lQMfnFV.png (I am currently at 10300 haste, 16000 crit, and 547 item level)

Kogot: Hey! Just wanted to say thanks for having this page! I love it!

Sunfyre: Thravia: Not sure. I'm curious how this interacts with the nerf. If it's 8% on all targets, that'd be nice.

Sunfyre: Quiver: I'd stick with the lower BP until you can comfortably hit the higher one without sacrificing too much crit.

Thravia: Hi Sunfyre. Whats your thougths on the new T16 set bonus? It's been changed again.

Quiver: Hi Sunfyre!
I am low ilvl Boomkin (around 517). After getting the 1st haste breakpoint(5273) i started stacking as much crit as possible. If i squeeze my gear, i can get to the 2nd haste breakpoint (10296); now, my question is: should i somewhat neglect crit and go for that 2nd haste plateau?
Thanks in advance!

Manax: Hello Sunfyre, do you think balance druids one of the worst dps classes in mop? I mean... look at worldoflogs, there are no balance druids in the top dps sections at no boss. Always WL, Mages or hunter that are good on ranged bosses. And AOE dps poor too, compared to other classes. What do you think?

Sunfyre: It depends if you have RPPM proc'd items. If you have two RPPM items (or just the legendary meta), you'll want to do the pre-Solar start (and you immediately proc CA once you hit Solar).

Nodotx: Sunfyre, is one channelling pulse towards Lunar still the ideal opener? i.e. Starfall > Wrath > Lunar Eclipse?
I saw this reply recently on a thread:
"I'm not sure why OP still says start fight pre-lunar, long time ago I switched to Solar eclipse.
I pre pot, starfall, (one dot), CA + INCA (or 3x treants), dotting (by this time most if not all procs are up- both dots AND treants enjoy it) and starifre\ss, starfall again.
when u leave CA u auto moving to lunar eclipse- which get u 3rd starfall.
with the old opner, Until u enter lunar, and starfire\ss to 0 energy and poping ca- most procs are pretty much over :P"